Somewhere along the way, we got the idea that we are supposed to think in perfectly neat single-file lines. We don't. We think in millions of idea bubbles. Sometimes, all those thought bubbles overwhelm us and we just have to let them pop. Don't hold it in. Speak. Be heard. You have a voice, too.

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Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Smile for It

“Slavery, racism, sexism, and other forms of
bigotry, subordination, and human rights abuse transform and adapt with the
times.” – John Prendergast

It’s no
secret to people who know me that I’m a big fan of Coke Icees. They’re my
favorite treat. Maybe they aren’t considered highbrow or terribly dignified,
but I’m not a fancy person and I’m relatively low maintenance.

I have the
town pretty wired, Icee-wise. I know which convenience stores have the best
ones, the ones that are nice and firm but just slushy enough, and I know which
ones to stay away from because they’re all foam.

But one day,
when I left the college where I teach, I saw the coveted “lighted cup” – the mark
of Icee’s presence – inside a convenience store I had not previously known sold
Icees, so I pulled in. My day had been lousy and the thought of a gloriously
cold Coke Icee was cheering.

I filled my
cup, walked to the counter to pay, and here my day – my already rotten day –
got worse.

“You should
smile,” said the man behind the counter.

“What?” As
this was the first sentence out of his mouth, I wasn’t entirely sure it was
directed at me. Granted, my response was less than clever.

“Smile,” he
said. “You’ll look pretty.”

“Kind of a
rough day, so I’m not really in a smiling mood,” I answered. “Just the Icee
today, thanks.”

“No, no, no,”
he laughed, holding the Icee up and away from me. I believe he thought he was
being playful. “You want this Icee? You have to give me a smile!"

I suppose it
would have been easiest to just give in, to smile, to give the man what he
wanted.

To submit.

And maybe it
was the bad day, or maybe it was my pride. Hell, maybe it was both, but…

…what right
did this man have to tell me what kind of expression to have on my face?

…do I owe
anyone a certain level of prettiness? Is this my obligation?

…why would this
man assume he had the power to deny me anything?

…for how
many years have women been taught to avoid conflict? To give in? To submit? For
how many years have we been seen as “the softer sex” simply because we have
been trained over and over to follow orders?

Sorry. I don’t
submit.

This man
wanted a physical response from my body in exchange for something. He wanted me
to whore myself out for an Icee.

Aw, hell no.

“I don’t
smile on command,” I said.

“Just a
little one,” he mock-pouted, “Please…?”

Another
customer came in as I said, “No. Just keep it.”

The man
behind me asked for a pack of Marlboro Red 100s. The man behind the counter
proceeded to ring him up. This was too much for me.

“Wait a
minute,” I said. I looked at the customer and asked him, “Didn’t he ask you to
smile?”

Totally
confused, the customer said, “No, was he supposed to ask me to smile?”

I turned to
the cashier. “You didn’t make him smile for his cigarettes? You wouldn’t sell
me an Icee because I wouldn’t smile, but to him you don’t make demands?”

The
customer, roughly just under six feet tall, wearing cowboy boots, jeans, and a
pearl-snap flannel, looked at the man behind the counter. “You wouldn’t sell
this lady an Icee?”

This confrontation the cashier took more
seriously. “I only wanted her to smile. She wouldn’t smile. I don’t know why it
was such a big deal.”

“She didn’t
want to, she shouldn’t have to. Did she offer to pay for it?” the customer
asked him, gesturing at the abandoned Icee.

“Yes, sir.” Sir! I thought. Well, that’s more than I
got. I never even got a “Miss” or a “Ma’am”.

“Then I
think you owe her an apology and an Icee.”

I was so
ready to be done here. Good grief, this all started about an Icee. But it wasn’t
over an Icee, not now. Not really. My intention had been to walk out, but then
I couldn’t help myself and I dragged this poor man into the whole thing, and
here he was being utterly gracious about it all and was doing his best to
rectify an entire situation that really only marginally involved him.

But here’s
the thing:

Why did it
take another man to solve this?

I spoke up
for myself. I said “No.” I said it multiple times. I was polite, yes, but I was
firm against smiling and that I only wanted the Icee. My voice should have been heard and respected.

Why, in
2016, is it still expected for women to look a certain way in order for them to
be acceptable? Don’t look at me and then decide whether or not what I have to
say is worth hearing. Men are not judged that way. Nor should women be. The
fact that the man behind the counter said he “[doesn’t] know why it was such a
big deal” is indicative of the problem itself. He simply does not see the
problem, so how can it be fixed? Telling a woman to smile so she’ll be pretty
means she’s not good enough the way she is, though apparently the customer behind
me suffered no such deficit as a man.

I appreciate
the man’s assistance, though I resent the need for it. I left with an Icee and
a relatively hollow apology.

I also left
with a melancholy sense of surrealism that this just occurred, that this occurred
in a time when equality should just be a ‘thing’ that happens. That day, as I
sipped my Icee, I looked back at how far we’ve come, but I also saw how far
there is still to go. And I was tired.